Trapped in Their Manor, Twin Dukes Keep Me Captive

Chapter 2:The Lieutenant Colonel

Before being herded onto the ship bound for North America, I had only heard of England’s colonies as idle gossip fluttered about at palace balls. They were hailed as an earthly paradise by the rising Puritan sects, yet to traditionalist Catholics, these lands were nothing but a den of devils, a playground for criminals, a haven for pirates, harlots and rogues, and a realm of hypocrites who paid hollow lip service to their sovereign. Old-school Catholics would speak of them with unbridled contempt, sneering at the plantation owners’ heavily accented French and broken English, alongside their crude, uncouth manners. “There is not a single true gentlewoman to be found there—so desperate are they that they beg pure-blooded brides all the way from Europe!”

Back then, I held no interest whatsoever in that far-off land, said to have rivers flowing with cotton and tea, nor the folk who dwelled upon it. My days were already filled to the brim with deciphering the soft murmurs of noble ladies and the myriad hidden meanings they conveyed with their Spanish fans, enough to occupy all my friends and me.

Yet after the Helena scandal, every fair-weather friend scattered without a second thought. Not a single one came to bid me farewell even when my carriage stood ready to depart Ludwigsburg; they only sent their stewards to mumble hollow, insincere well-wishes. It was an infuriating slight.

My most powerful patron, my mother the late Viscountess Edmond, was equally furious with me. My reckless blunder had ruined the delicate arrangement she’d crafted for the Duke: the beauty she had planned to present to him in August had to be brought forward early, forcing her to rack her brains once more to devise a brand-new gift for his August birthday celebration.

“I earnestly hope these three years of travel will temper you into a mature noble lady, blessed with the wisdom and tact befitting your station, so I may never again be trapped in such an agonizing predicament as today.”

That was the only message the vexed Viscountess sent via servants. She did not grace me with her presence, dispatching merely an empty carriage emblazoned with our family crest to see me off. My departure time fell unluckily amid the hour noble ladies and maidens took their strolls through the woodlands on the outskirts of town—vying for admiration upon that silent social stage mattered far more than her own daughter being exiled.

Even then, every soul, myself included, dismissed three years as a trivial matter. A distant uncle of my mother’s—the very man who had introduced her to the Duke in her youth—even sent word, suggesting that if I found spare time during my banishment, I ought to journey to the Grand Duchy of Heidelberg to observe and inquire after the Duke of Heidelberg’s two sisters, Anne and Elizabeth. He burned with curiosity over whether the ladies truly possessed the staggering beauty whispered of across the courts.

But nine days after I left Ludwigsburg, my carriage was waylaid by a band of highwaymen. I swear by the Virgin Mary, old Count Chartres masterminded this treachery. No ordinary forest robber would dare lay hands upon a noble lady’s carriage!

I soon learned how hopelessly naive I had been. They struck at dusk. The coachman I’d hired in Ludwigsburg abandoned me and my maid without a backward glance the moment the bandits appeared, vanishing without a trace never to be seen again.

At first, I attempted to reason with them. “I am Viscountess Edmond. If you guarantee my safe passage to the nearest township, I swear upon my family’s honor to pay a ransom fitting my rank and absolve you of all wrongdoing.”

The brigands roared with laughter. “My Lady Viscountess, do you truly believe your manor could yield ten thousand thalers in ransom? Someone has already offered us that sum. Rest assured, we mean not to take your life—we are no fools to openly cross noble kin. Whether you draw breath hereafter rests solely on God’s mercy. Best of luck, noble lady!”

“My estate yields twenty-one thousand German thalers a year in revenue…” “Splendid. That makes your worth precisely two hundred and ten thalers.”

After uttering that baffling remark, they stripped every scrap of fine clothing and ornamentation from my person with brutal roughness, tossing onto my frame a tattered linen shift and threadbare old wool wraps little better than rags, reeking so foully I could scarce hold back my retching. They bound me tight and locked me within a cottage, and over the following days seized several more young captives, ranging in age from mere teenage girls to grown women of thirty.

After several failed escape attempts that left me starved and weak, I finally grasped their horrid scheme. They intended to sell me and the other captives like livestock to Württemberg’s military recruiters, who would ship us as auxiliary recruits to England’s distant colonial holdings across the ocean.

The Duke of Württemberg permitted his army to purchase his own subjects to sell abroad as colonial levies. At that moment, it struck me as the cruelest joke the world had ever known. Over a decade prior, the Duke had struck a treaty with London: each year, he would supply a corps of two thousand three hundred troops, infantry and light cavalry alike. In return, the British Crown paid him an annual subsidy plus recruitment fees, rumored to total over a million thalers each year.

Until that moment, I had never paused to wonder: our duchy held a finite population, yet regiments departed as reliably as the sunrise year after year—where did all those levies come from? Now I knew the terrible truth.

Once I stepped aboard that ship bound for North America, odds were I would never set foot on European soil again, my fate left entirely to chance. Damned Count Chartres! When I return to Ludwigsburg, I shall make him pay dearly for this!

Having pieced together their plot, I resolved to conserve my strength, waiting for an opportunity to address a ranking military officer—so I might retain enough breath to declare my name and lineage and escape this doom.

The day of handover arrived swiftly. Amid the captured commoners’ terror, an officer clad in British military uniform stepped into our cell. He surveyed us as one might inspect lambs bound for the s*******r, then spoke to the bandit captain with practiced ease. “Two are too elderly, one far too young. The rest are gaunt. I will pay no more than twenty thalers apiece.”

“That is far too low! I went to endless trouble rounding all these folk up; feeding and housing them costs a thaler a day alone. Forty thalers each, one thousand thalers total.”

Fuelled by a sudden surge of desperation, I threw myself against the cell bars and shouted at the officer. “I am Eleanor Franquemont Edmond, Viscountess Edmond of Ludwigsburg, of royal illegitimate noble blood! If you escort me back to Ludwigsburg, I shall reward you with ten thousand thalers!”

The officer froze, studying me with stunned bewilderment. After a long pause, he turned to the bandit captain, his words plunging me into an icy despair. “Fair pale skin, blue veins plain to see beneath—this is the Franquemont girl you spoke of?”

The bandit captain shrugged dismissively. “The very one. You know how our overly amorous Duke fathered endless bastards, more than he could ever hope to count. Word has it her mother was once a miller’s daughter, deluding herself into dreaming of becoming a countess. She lost her wits after giving birth to her, and the girl’s mind is unhinged as well.”

“Tsk, this marks the third Franquemont I have handled. His Grace’s illegitimate spawn turn up everywhere,” the officer muttered. He knelt down, staring at me with a chilling gaze. “How does the rank of second lieutenant sound?”

“Too low. At minimum a first lieutenant. After all, telling the British she is the Duke’s daughter and passing her off as a colonel will hold water.”

“Out of the question. Lieutenant Colonel is the highest rank we can fudge; the English are not fools.” “Very well, a first lieutenant then. For old friendship’s sake, nine hundred thalers total.”

It was only much later I learned the British paid eighty thalers for each ordinary levy recruit, an extra three hundred thalers for a lieutenant, and an additional fifteen hundred thalers for a lieutenant colonel.

And so I was marched onto the vessel sailing for Georgia Colony in North America, named a Lieutenant Colonel of a British mercenary regiment in name only—the so-called Lieutenant Colonel Franquemont, a title with no real authority behind it.